Method and Apparatus for Privacy Protected Clustering of User Interest Profiles

1. A method for privacy protected clustering of interest profiles of end users, the method comprising: generating, by a user device, at least one interest profile segment based on an interest profile of an end user; obtaining, by the user device, semantic terms corresponding to the at least one interest profile segment based on interaction with a semantic metadata database communicatively coupled to a user device of the end user, wherein the semantic terms are obtained from amongst one or more semantic terms provided in the semantic metadata database; transforming, by the user device, each of the at least one interest profile segment into at least one semantic representation based on the semantic terms; and assigning, by the user device, a cluster identifier to each of the at least one interest profile segment based on the at least one semantic representation, wherein the cluster identifier is generated using locality sensitive hashing technique.

2. The method as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the method further comprises providing the at least one interest profile segment and the cluster identifier corresponding to each of the at least one interest profile segment to a remote node, wherein the remote node is configured to act as an interest group aggregator for an interest group associated with the cluster identifier, and wherein the cluster identifier is provided over an anonymous communication channel.

3. The method as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the method further comprises: establishing, by the user device, a plurality of anonymous communication channels with a remote node; slicing the interest profile into one or more profile slices; and transmitting, by the user device, the cluster identifier and each of the one or more profile slices to the remote node over the plurality of anonymous communication channels, wherein each of the one or more profile slices are transmitted separately over at least one of the plurality of anonymous communication channels.

4. The method as claimed in claim 3 , wherein the method further comprises removing from the interest profile, personally identifiable information of the end user.

5. The method as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the method further comprises: transmitting, by the user device, the cluster identifier over a plurality of anonymous communication channels; receiving, by the user device, cluster identifiers of other user devices over the plurality of anonymous communication channels; identifying, based on the transmitting and the receiving, the other user devices having a cluster identifier similar to the cluster identifier of the end user; and enabling exchange of data between the user device of the end user and the other user devices over at least one of the plurality of anonymous communication channels.

6. The method as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the assigning further comprises: obtaining a dot product between each of the at least one interest profile segment and a set of hash functions; and concatenating signs of the dot products to obtain a hash code as the cluster identifier corresponding to the at least one interest profile segment.

7. The method as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the transforming further comprises tagging each of the at least one interest profile segment based on the semantic terms to obtain the at least one semantic representation.

8. A user device comprising: a processor; and a memory coupled to the processor, the memory comprising instructions which when executed by the processor cause the processor to act as: a profile transformation module configured to: obtain semantic terms corresponding to at least one interest profile segment based on interaction with a semantic metadata database coupled to the user device, wherein the semantic terms are obtained from amongst one or more semantic terms provided in the semantic metadata database; and transform each of the at least one interest profile segment into at least one semantic representation; and a cluster identifier module configured to assign a cluster identifier to each of the at least one interest profile segment based on the at least one semantic representation, wherein the cluster identifier is generated using locality sensitive hashing technique.

9. The user device as claimed in claim 8 , wherein the memory further comprises instructions which when executed by the processor cause the processor to act as: an interest profile generation module configured to generate an interest profile of an end user associated with the user device based on profile data of the end user; and a profile segmentation module configured to segment the interest profile into the at least one interest profile segment.

10. The user device as claimed in claim 8 , wherein the memory further comprises instructions which when executed by the processor cause the processor to: establish an anonymous communication channel with an associated remote node configured to act as an interest group aggregator for an interest group associated with the cluster identifier; and provide the at least one interest profile segment and the cluster identifier corresponding to each of the at least one interest profile segments to the remote node, wherein the cluster identifier is provided over the anonymous communication channel.

11. The user device as claimed in claim 8 , wherein the memory further comprises instructions which when executed by the processor cause the processor to: establish a plurality of anonymous communication channels with a remote node; remove personally identifiable information of the end user from the interest profile; and transmit the cluster identifier and the interest profile of the end user to the remote node over the plurality of anonymous communication channels.

12. The user device as claimed in claim 8 , wherein the memory further comprises instructions which when executed by the processor cause the processor to: slice the interest profile into one or more profile slices; and transmit the cluster identifier and each of the one or more profile slices to a remote node over a plurality of anonymous communication channels, wherein each of the one or more profile slices are transmitted over separate anonymous communication channels.

13. The user device as claimed in claim 8 , wherein the memory further comprises instructions which when executed by the processor cause the processor to: transmit the cluster identifier over a plurality of anonymous communication channels; receive cluster identifiers of other user devices over the plurality of anonymous communication channels; identify the other user devices having a cluster identifier similar to the cluster identifier of the end user based on the transmitting and the receiving; and enable exchange of data with the other user devices over at least one of the anonymous communication channels.

14. The user device as claimed in claim 8 , wherein the memory further comprises instructions which when executed by the processor cause the processor to: obtain at least a partial image of a central aggregator node of interest groups of an end user of the user device; exchange the cluster identifier with other user devices over a plurality of anonymous communication channels; identify the other user devices having a cluster identifier similar to the cluster identifier of the end user based on cluster identifiers of the other user devices received over the plurality of anonymous communication channels; and provide recommendation services over at least one of the plurality of the anonymous communication channels to the other user devices identified based on the cluster identifiers.

15. A non-transient computer-readable medium having embodied thereon a computer program for executing a method of privacy protected clustering of interest profiles of end users, the method comprising: generating at least one interest profile segment based on an interest profile of an end user; obtaining semantic terms corresponding to the at least one interest profile segment based on interaction with a semantic metadata database coupled to a user device of the end user, wherein the semantic terms are obtained from amongst one or more semantic terms provided in the semantic metadata database; transforming each of the at least one interest profile segment into at least one semantic representation; and assigning a cluster identifier to each of the at least one interest profile segment based on the at least one semantic representation, wherein the cluster identifiers are generated using locality sensitive hashing technique.